


Hold Your Hand While Dancing

by imissthembutitwasntadisaster



Series: The Adventures of August and Inez [2]
Category: Teenage Love Triangle Series - Taylor Swift (Song Cycle), evermore - Taylor Swift (Album), folklore - Taylor Swift (Album)
Genre: Gen, Girl Gang, Healing, growing together, playing the piano equals bringing joy back into the house, they all deserve meaningful friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28748652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imissthembutitwasntadisaster/pseuds/imissthembutitwasntadisaster
Summary: Betty is the talk of the town after rejecting James' proposal, so August drags Inez along to comfort her.There'll be happiness after you
Relationships: August & Betty, August & Inez, Betty/James (former), Inez & Betty
Series: The Adventures of August and Inez [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2107629
Kudos: 1





	Hold Your Hand While Dancing

Inez could never understand why August stayed friends with her. The summer girl was kind and brave and full of compassion, and Inez just snapped and kicked and scratched her way through life. On her darkest days she thought it was only because August didn’t have anyone else, once another friend turned up she would vanish as quickly as she had appeared. At her happiest moments, she just pushed her questioning back into the cobwebbed corners of her mind and pretended she couldn’t see it. 

When the news went around that Betty had rejected James’s proposal, of course it was August who showed up at Inez’s apartment demanding they do something about it. Inez stood nonplussed in her doorframe, not really understanding why her friend wanted to do something for a woman who had clearly never liked either of them. But the redhead was firm. 

“You can make her a casserole, yours are to die for, you _know_ that.”

“Why would I even get involved?” Inez tried to avoid her friend’s gaze, she was wearing that look which meant _I know you’re better than this_ and it always ended up working on her. 

“Because everyone’s on James’ side! They’re saying she’s _fucked in the head_. We have to help.”

Inez rubbed her arms, already mostly convinced but keeping up a fight for the show of it.

“I don’t see how it’s any business of ours.”

“We both know what it’s like to have no one on our side.”

That sold it. Of course it did. Inez made the casserole, a casserole that everyone would have loved if anyone besides August got to taste it, and the two of them trampled through the late November air to knock at Betty’s door. She opened it, clearly having just been crying, and looked utterly shocked to see the pair before her. It made Inez uncomfortable, she wasn’t used to being looked at head-on like this, not when she was trying, _really trying_ to be kind. She shoved the casserole abruptly into Betty’s arms. 

“Here, we thought you’d like this.” 

August gave her a look that meant _I know this is you trying but try harder, OK?_ and smiled at the now very confused-looking woman before them. 

“We were wondering if you needed any… help. If you wanted to talk at all.”

“I’m fine, really, I’m doing okay,” said Betty, but her voice cracked at the end of her sentence. Just a little. Just enough to be noticed. August’s eyes became even more kind, if possible.

“Why don’t we come inside,” she said softly, and Betty, with a weariness born of lingering heartache stepped aside and let them in.

Her house was pretty, quaint some would call it, painted all in pastels and filled with succulents and knitwear. She gestured to a sofa, some armchairs, and all three women sat down. A silence filled up the room, pushing on the windows and the walls until Inez thought they might break. Betty fidgeted with her fingers. August looked around at the paintings on the walls. Inez felt like she might break soon too.

Finally she could bear it no longer. 

“You should really eat that today if you want it to be good. If I put it in the oven right now it’ll be done for dinner. Unless you had other plans?” Betty shook her head, still weary, still lost. How easily people get lost. The whole town had planned out Betty’s future from when she was in school. Maybe, thought Inez with a dawning moment of clarity, that was part of the problem. She took the casserole (it really was one of her best) out of limp hands and went into what she correctly guessed was the kitchen, shutting the door behind her. Just before she did, she heard August exclaim with delight:

“What a lovely piano? Do you play?”

Inez could never understand why August stayed friends with her, she thought as she preheated the oven, the loud fan drowning out any noises from the other room. Here she was, hiding in the kitchen, unable to say anything, do anything to help. Useless. She and Betty had never been close, either, Betty had thought she was better than Inez and Inez had though Betty was a goody-two-shoes, always wrapped up in that cardigan and her high-and-mighty morals. Really there was no reason to be here at all. She certainly wasn’t a good person. She didn’t try to be. It wasn’t in her nature. 

But Betty had looked broken. So Inez put the casserole in the oven and went back over to the door to the living room. 

She opened it to find Betty playing tentatively, an old hymn (one Inez had always loved), and August singing in a soft soprano. 

_O come, Thou Dayspring, from on high,_

_And cheer us by Thy drawing nigh;_

_Disperse the gloomy clouds of night –_

She broke off when she saw her friend standing in the doorway. 

“Inez! Sing with me!”

And Inez did. She had been an alto in Church Choir growing up and she had forgotten most of it but she _could_ remember all the advent hymns. 

_And death's dark shadows put to flight._

_Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel_

_Shall come to thee, O Israel._

Her voice was hard but she could hold a tune well. By the time they reached the end, Betty was playing as loudly as the old piano would sound and all three of them were singing at the top of their lungs. The immense grief of the room had vanished, swept away as if it had never happened, as if no one had ever been lonely among those bright patterns and soft prints. Eager to keep it that way, Inez launched quickly into a half-remembered carol. They spent the rest of the dying afternoon stumbling their way through songs they had been singing all their life. They only chose ones about rejoicing. They made a point of that. 

James was never mentioned, not once, but when Inez and August were leaving, Betty suggested with a tremor in her voice that they do this again. And they did, evening after evening, soon slipping into a time when carols were acceptable, and then, as the snow melted and the birds returned and there was an aching breeze in the air that promised good things, they moved to Easter hymns and popular songs of their childhoods. Inez started bringing her guitar and the small house seemed to grow in size every time she played it. It was good, she found herself thinking one evening as the sun set in gold and green and pink. This was good. 

Of course Betty found new friends and many of her old ones came back after a suitable period. Soon she was hosting parties again like she had never stopped. She never really grew as close to August and Inez as they were to each other, they continued as a pair all the way into old age. 

But the evenings of singing continued, although they were less frequent, and they always seemed louder than the parties somehow. And Betty never forgot to invite them to anything. August dragged Inez along, of course, and forced her to bring her casserole, which the whole town proclaimed a success. And when Betty did eventually get married, she had two bridesmaids who hadn’t been a part of her friendship group in high school.

Inez could never understand why August stayed friends with her. After a while she became convinced the summer girl wouldn’t leave her, but she never figured out what was worth staying for. She didn’t figure it out when she made dry and withering comments about James’ new hairstyle and Betty laughed so hard she almost fell off her chair. She didn’t figure it out when she kept turning up on Betty’s porch, even in the snow, even on the coldest evenings, with her guitar and a hymnal. She certainly didn’t see the look of admiration on August’s face when Mrs Anderson called Betty a slut in the grocery line and Inez whirled on her with blazing rage in her eyes and four of her sharpest ruining pieces of gossip about the old hag spilling off her tongue. She wouldn’t have figured anything out even if she had seen it. Of course she had defended Betty, they were _friends_. That was just what friends did. 

A lot of other people couldn’t figure it out either, but they didn’t have to, they didn’t matter. None of them believed what August said when they asked her about her friendship.

For, you see, August said Inez was kind. But that couldn’t be true, could it?

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
